The National Treasury. Wow, that was a boring caption. It's a statue of Albert Gallatin in front, and I have no idea who that is. Apparently he was a Congressman? And probably other things too... DC is full of statues of people I've never heard of, and it makes me feel perpetually embarrassed and ashamed. ... wow, it's maybe not quite that intense... I mean, it might inspire me to wikipedia something, but that's about it.
The White House! As a only slightly related side note, I sometimes eat lunch in the park right across the street from the White House, because it's right right by where I work, and yesterday while I was working through my rice and beans, I saw a black squirrel! Now THERE'S something to wikipedia!
There were lots of protests, etc., happening in the general vacinity of the White House, including a man wearing a baseball cap with a politically opinionated sign taped on it singing "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen."
So it's the Treasury Department, then the next building is the White House, then the next building is this one. I forgot what it is. Isn't it nice though?
This is maybe my favorite. They couldn't refer to normal stoplight colors, could they? No? Which leads me to believe they're not really referring to a stoplight after all. I think maybe the sign should read, "when someone named Amber comes out and lifts up her shirt, then you can proceed. One car at a time.
Um. Ok.
So ok, I walked east on Pennsylvania, past the White House, etc, and then turned and walked south on 17th, and went past this, among other things, like the National Headquarters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, which I opted not to take a picture of.
The Washington Monument. With this being the tallest structure in DC, it's totally understandable that it might be coming up in a lot of pictures... just so you know...... you've been warned.
This is the WWII Memorial
(The ones that are really self-explanatory I'm not even going to worry about captioning, especially when the topic is kind of serious and my captions are generally pretty goofy/irreverant)
The reflecting pool, with the Lincoln Memorial way off in the distance. Isn't it doing a nice job reflecting? I thought so too.
This is the Vietnam War Memorial
Next Ranger Talk: ... WHEN!!!!! I got so excited when I saw this sign... and if they're just teasing me, if the talks don't actually happen... Maybe what you have to do is set up camp and wait, so you don't ever miss it. Get it? Camp? With the rangers? Yeah, I'm so clever.
Same reflecting pool, from the other end. It goes between the WWII Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial... if you're having a Forrest Gump flashback moment right now, then you're not alone...
The Lincoln Memorial
More promises of Ranger Talks, but this time, YOU can SUMMON THEM! WRITE THE PHONE NUMBER DOWN, KIDS, WRITE IT DOWN!!!
Never before had I wanted to slide down a banister so badly as right after I noticed this sign. I think it must have a footnote on it somewhere that reads "unless you reeeeeally want to, or unless it's snowing."
Mr. Lincoln
You can read this if you want. You don't have to though. You've maybe heard it before anyway.
Close up...
I felt like my mom, the famous school photographer: "Ok Abe, look at my finger and follow it just a little to the left... chin up, there you go! Ok now smile!"
It's kind of a really big statue.
The sunny side...
... and the not sunny side. I was going to say, "and the shadowy side," but that seemed sketchy-sounding, and also potentially disrespectful to the nice tourists taking their picture in front of the Washington Monument.
And then, finally, I found what I had been needing to see for a long time...
water. God, I miss the river. And the Potomac isn't the Mississippi (obviously, otherwise we wouldn't call it the Potomac), but at least it's something, right? And I'm pretty sure those are kayaks floating around out there...
Across the river - over in Virginia - is the US Air Force Memorial. From up close it looks cool, maybe, from from far away it just looks kind of like bug antennas. Not that that's not cool...
When approaching the Korean War Memorial, you can do zero things that are fun, like, for example, speed skating. So don't even think about it.
The Korean War Memorial
This is the Jefferson Memorial, off in the distance. I'll go see it up close some day, but today, I didn't feel like walking that far.
Alright, it's been in the background of enough pictures, time to get up close and personal with the Washington Momument.
There are 2 different colors of stone because they started building it, and then the Civil War began and they decided that continued work on a monument would be a poor use of their time. By the time they picked it up again a while later, they quarry they'd been getting stone out of was all empty, so they had to go somewhere else, and somewhere else had different color stone. That is a true story. You can wikipedia it if you want to.
The Washington Monument is on a bit of a hill, and there's lots of wide open space all around it, so you can see a lot of things from it...
... like the Capitol Building...
... and the White House...
... and the Lincoln Memorial... (ps, I thought this thing big colorful thing in the foreground was going to be a slip 'n' slide, but then when it turned out to be a parachute, I didn't know whether or not I should be disappointed)
... and hot, sleepy tourists.
This is the United States Department of Agriculture. When things get USDA approved, this is where it all goes down.
An alternative way of reading this sign is: "If you're going through major green-rolling-hills-of-Iowa withdrawals right now, or if you really like strawberries, or if you're a handicapped person in the water, you've come to the right place."
This is the Freer Gallery of Art, which has a nice collection of some American but mostly Asian art. It made me hungry for Chinese food. Is that something I should be embarrassed about?
So I'm standing in the middle of the mall right now. If you look east, it's the Capitol building...
... north, it's the National Museum of Natural History...
... south, it's the Smithsonian Castle...
... and west, it's the... wait, what is this thing again? I don't think we've seen that before!
I decided to head to the National Museum of Natural History (I always have to stop and think very hard to make sure I don't mess up the two "Nat..." words in that title) Right in the foyer is this lovely giant elephant.
And then the whole museum is full of signs like this, so you can always know where you are in relation to said elephant, and thus you will never be lost. :)
The Nat. Museum of Nat. History is full of lots of fun/weird/random things, like dead stuffed lions...
... and a dead caribou...
... and a dead rhino...
... and a dead giraffe...
... it was kind of like going to the zoo, except instead of the animals being alive, they weren't.
I also learned lots of important things, like "Mammals have special earbones!"
And then they had dinosaurs...
and a mammoth! All in all, a wonderful place to go if you are a class of 5th graders.
But it's not all fake animals at the Nat. Muse. Nat. Hist. They've also got a collection of freakishly large diamonds, like this one, the Hope Diamond.
And they currently have a very nice photography exhibit - come visit me before Sept. 28 and you can see it too!
And then there was this. In conclusion, there's much of the Nat-m-nat-h left to see, because it's totally huge.
Outside, back on the mall, near the Sculpture Gardens, was a tree preservation that seemed to awkwardly lack trees... hm... lots of rocks though, maybe it's a typo. I also often say "tree" when I mean to say "rock."
This is in the sculpture gardens - I took one look at this lovely piece and thought, hey, I bet that's a woman and a bird! And it is. Thank you, Juan Miro, for being so stylistically distinctive that even I can feel like an art connaisseur.
Also at the sculpture gardens...
These poor girls. Somebody should tell them that they wore their Statue of Liberty hats to the wrong city! How embarrassing! (It's not going to be me though, I'm non-confrontational.)
By this time of the day, I'd done a heck of enough walking and decided to head home...
I walked past this former Fireman's Insurance Company turned Starbucks, which is thankfully a smoke free environment.
Always a green light on Fun Street... nice job, DC.
This is the Smithsonian's National Building Museum, which, I'd imagine, is filled with thousands of Legos. That you can play with.
I decided to wander home via DC's Chinatown, just to see what it was like, but after wandering for a while in what I thought was the right area, the only thing I saw that even referenced China was this Quizno's Subs... and it made me kind of nervous...
But then I saw this. And lots of restaurants, and shotgun stores selling faux ming vases. And I felt better.
Chinatown also has a Fuddruckers. Thank goodness! (and just in case you're worried, there IS a Starbucks across the street as well... but seriously, I really love Fuddruckers.)
There you have it! A day in DC! Check your planners, book your flights, and pack your walking shoes - this could be you!
